Two police officers shot in troubled US 
town hit by race row after gun death

St Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said a 32-year-old officer was shot in the face and a 41-year-old was hit in the shoulder. He said both are conscious after the attack in the Missouri town, believed to have happened in front of Ferguson Police Department.

Mr Belmar said he did not know who shot the officers.

The shots were fired after protesters gathered following the resignation of the town’s embattled police chief Thomas Jackson yesterday.

Mr Jackson was the sixth employee to resign or be fired after a Justice Department report cleared a white former Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, of charges over the fatal shooting of unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown last summer. Mr Wilson has since resigned.

A five-year-old boy has died in a gun battle as his family were driving away from a park north of St Louis, Missouri.

Gunfire erupted from a sport utility vehicle that pulled up alongside the family’s minivan at O’Fallon Park. The child’s father, who was driving, returned fire before the SUV drove off.

The child was pronounced dead in hospital and a 15-year-old boy and an older male passenger are in a stable condition.